X For Unknown
by slam a revolving door
Summary: [Oneshot]'Gregory House is fortyseven, and this is what he knows of love.'


**Disclaimer**: I don't own House M.D., they belong to TPTB.

** X for Unknown **

At birth, he opened his eyes and looked at the world with such a solemn, grave expression on his face that made mother cry. His father was away in some far-off country whose name wouldn't have meant anything to him then. It still didn't mean anything to him. He listened to the conversation flowing and ebbing around him and perhaps he understood it, perhaps he didn't. Some babies are born with grace, with joy, with hope. He was born with thoughtfulness, reflection, memory. And he did remember, more than he should have. He didn't remember the mundane details that his mother would later tell him – that he was born on the 11 June 1959, or that his aunt was there and she was the second to hold him – his mother should have been the second, his dad should have been the first. But the world is full of 'should haves' and 'could haves' and 'would haves' and somehow they don't mean a thing anymore. What he did remember were the subtle details, like the blue of his mother's eyes as she carried him, or the warmth of her shirt, and the tears that spilled onto his cheeks. He was born to tears and weeping, yet he knew his mother loved him. How? He really couldn't tell. How does a dog know to wag its tail when its master approaches? How do the waves know to pull back from the shore? How did he know his mother loved him? Well, don't all mothers love their children? Twenty minutes old, and that was what he knew of love.

At five, he ran around the tombs at Egypt looking for mummies and gold and riches. He watched from a safe distance from behind the palm trees and the fabled golden sand which was really a dusty yellow, and no different from the sand on the beaches back at home. He watched them holding hands and he watched his mother smile when his father returned home after a while at work. He watched his father kiss his mother gently on the lips, and he caught her soft look as she watched her husband leave each morning. He saw her crying one afternoon, a letter in her lap and he heard her tell her father that her father – his grandfather! The grandfather he never met: the grandfather he would never meet – had died. And he listened as she sobbed her heart out and he heard her lament the fact that she had not been there for him. He heard his father's gentle reply that it wasn't her fault, and that she hadn't been there for her father because she had been there for him. Him and Greg – as an afterthought. And he watched as his mother's tears dried up and she smiled bravely. He realised then, that people made sacrifices because of love; that sometimes in his life the road would split and he would be left stranded. And it would be him, not his mother, who would have to make those choices. He only hoped that he would make the right decision. But he thought, deep down inside, that he would never be able to love someone the way his mother loved his father. Because making sacrifices for someone else was stupid. It was like telling Jack-next-door that he could have his marbles for free. He wasn't like that.

At ten, he realised that his parents' marriage wasn't as beautiful as he had always imagined. True, his mother still smiled when his father came home, and his father still kissed her gently, but she still cried in the afternoons when his father was away. And sometimes at night when his father was still away. He made a friend at school – why was it so difficult to make friends? – and she told him how she would lie awake at night listening to her parents fight, and how scared her brother would be. She told him how she would refuse to go to sleep until the yelling stopped. He saw the bags under her eyes and wondered at how grown-up she looked. He was glad his father wasn't home often enough for his parents to fight. Soon afterwards his friend moved away, and he was left with a scrap of paper with her address on it, and he realised that he would miss her. He did write to her after that: long letters that detailed all the happenings at school and everything he could think of. She wrote back once, a little note in tear-smudged ink, telling him how her mother was ill and her brother was terrified. How her father would go out for days on end and come back in a rage. He never heard from her again, but from then on, he watched his parents more closely. But he never saw anything vaguely like what his friend had described, and for that he was grateful. At ten, he realised that love changes over time.

At fifteen, he fell in lust. He decided that he loved the way she moved, the way she flicked her hair, the way she giggled. Fortunately for him, she decided she loved him too. They dated for a while, under the watchful eyes of his mother and father – who seemed to be home more often these days. He held her hand when they walked together, smiled at her the way he saw his mother smiling at his father, and did everything he thought he was suppose to. So did she. They didn't last very long. They were too different, too young, too inexperienced. And they didn't love each other. He couldn't remember if she dumped him or he dumped her, but the next thing he knew, he was pummelling his pillow and she was coming to class with red-rimmed eyes and they were avoiding each other. His father took it to himself then, to have a little heart-to-heart with him, telling him how he was suppose to treat girls ("With respect, Son, with respect.") and he listened politely, all the while sceptical. How would his father know? His father wasn't there when his mother was crying, was he? He knew nothing of love – perhaps just as little as he did. Who knew anything about love anyway? Not him, not his girlfriend, not his father. He was fifteen, and he was falling out of love with the idea of love. Ironic, how that works.

At twenty, he was in college and he had met Crandall, fellow med-student and notorious for being in love. At first he was happy for Crandall each time he got a new girlfriend – not that he showed it, because twenty years of knowing was twenty years too long for expressions of happiness. But after a while, he grew more cynical and he started making bets – with himself – about how long each new girlfriend would last. Not long, he realised. Yet Crandall was happy – happy even when his latest relationship was about to dump him – and as he watched Crandall fall in and out of love, he realised that Crandall didn't care about the down sides of love. Crandall only saw the up sides, felt the dizzy dancing, tasted the cotton candy. He both admired and looked down on Crandall because of that. Crandall was a fool, but Crandall was happy. His earlier lesson that love made one do stupid things was reiterated.

During his thirties, he met Boy-Wonder Wilson, Stacy and Cuddy. From watching Wilson, he learnt that it was possible to love more than one person at a time, and he realised that love was work, and that you couldn't just leave it in the corner – that you had to put in effort … or it would die on you. He knew that all too well from watching Wilson, all too well. From Stacy, he learnt that sometimes love was worth the effort, and that what he thought he couldn't do, he could – sometimes. He realised that sometimes he could – would? – make those sacrifices he was sure he couldn't, that sometimes he could think about someone else before himself. Sometimes. And towards the end of their relationship, he realised that love could make you throw everything you believed in away – that sometimes life was valued more than love. And from Cuddy he learned that sometimes love deserted you, that you couldn't have everything. He learnt that some people gave everything up for their career, only to regret it later. He wouldn't regret anything. He refused to regret anything. Throughout those years he learnt that love came at the worst times and that it refused to go away even when you wanted it to. By the time he got through his thirties, he hated love.

Now he is in his forties – nearly towards the end of his forties, and all he knows is that everyone is moving and changing around him, and he just wants everything to stop, to stop, to stop! He watches Cuddy in her office and realises that she has finally realised what she has given up for her career, and he watches her regret, watches her wish. No amount of wishing can undo past deeds – he should know. He sees Wilson in the corridor, haggard for a change, and realises that his friend hates himself for what he has done, yet cannot stop. He realises that Wilson is careening wildly out of control, but he also sees that there is a leash holding his two struggling friends together. And he hopes that they'll realise it too and stop struggling against the tide – their tide. He sees Stacy walk away with Mark and he knows that he could never be enough for her, he never was, he never would be. And he knows – in that deeper, darker part of him that still knows – that he is happy for her, if happiness can be achieved without actually being satisfied. He watches Chase kill a patient because of one phone call, and he acknowledges that love makes you stupid and blind and all the other adjectives that he had always thought, but never wanted to voice. And he watches Foreman and sees how steady he is, how steadfast, how strong. And he thinks that it really isn't surprising that he is the only one of the team in a stable relationship.

And then there is Cameron. Cameron: the girl who loves all, and who all love. The _woman _who cannot help but reach out to each person she meets, the woman who cares the most, who suffers the most, who loves the most. The person who reached out to him and made him realise how painfully inadequate he felt, and how much he wanted to be recover. She is the one who he pushed away because of his awareness of his weakness; the one who notices his disability the least, and the one who cares about his disability the least. The one who he cannot love and wants to love.

Gregory House is forty-seven, and this is what he knows of love. That love will maim you and make you give everything up just for it. That love makes you do stupid things, and make stupid decisions, stupid sacrifices. That it makes people hurt so badly that they want to tear their heart out and cast it away.

Allison Cameron is thirty-three, and what she knows of love is so different from his. She knows that love is beautiful, and precious, and all the soppy clichéd things that make people cry and hug and sniffle in movies. She knows that love hurts and continues hurting long after hope is gone. But she knows that love is inevitable.

He doesn't know anything anymore.


End file.
